Forget the browser wars, here come the JavaScript wars Hrush Sep 23, 2008

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Google’s recent release of their Chrome browser has had the internet world aflutter. I haven’t had the chance to try it as there’s no Mac version, but Chrome has wowed a lot of people with its minimalist design and its comic book launch; it’s also managed to perturb a lot of people with concerns about privacy and the impact on Firefox, everyone’s favourite independently manufactured browser.

Firefox comes from a not-for-profit organisation, Mozilla, and this is part of the reason it has been so beloved by the geek world and, increasingly, the mainstream internet user. Chrome has come along just when Mozilla was starting to make the slightest dent in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser and the geek world is worried that Chrome will take share from Firefox and not Mozilla–a new browser war is apparently in the making.

The world may be wrong to worry–here’s the browser share statistics for the Cleartrip Blog over the last week, we’ve listed the popular browser families without bothering with version numbers:

The last time we posted our blog browser statistics, Internet Explorer had about 57% share and Firefox had 29%. The loser is clearly Internet Explorer, dipping 11% since April this year.

More interesting than the browser wars, however, are the impending JavaScript wars–every browser manufacturer (other than Microsoft) is out to prove that they have the fastest JavaScript performance in the land. Each manufacturer is investing heavily in their browser’s JavaScript performance. Google created an all new engine called V8 for Chrome. Apple has updated WebKit’s new SquirrelFish engine before the previous version even hit a production release. And Firefox 3.1 will be powered by TraceMonkey, Mozilla’s all new engine.

Charles Ying has the analysis

Seems WebKit and SquirrelFish Extreme are in the lead.